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TimeSplitters 4/Internal Collection
Bespoke Code= Bespoke Codz and Effectz It’s Alive *Monkey Scientists assembling the Frankenstein monster. They will retrieve the limb thrown by the player and carry it aloft to the monster and weld it into place with tiny acetylene torches. Lots of sparks, etc. They are indestructible, but if a player tries to shoot them, they will all swarm up to the offender and bounce up and down, making angry gestures and noises. If the enemy monster enters the lab, they all go nuts and jump on it and hang on its legs as one hammers ineffectually at its head. This has no actual effect. **This is all heavy-duty animation and code work. The best way to deal with this would be to get the game mode working, be convinced that it is good and then action this work. A simpler fall-back plan should also be proposed. *When the Monster is complete, it is struck by lightning and flashes black with the white bones inside and then we scale it up to be monster-sized. *Frankenstein Monster instantly kills enemies in range. Want him to pick them up and smash against the floor. Failing that, punch or kick them flying. *When the control apparatus is destroyed, the Monster clutches its head and collapses into bits. *The Monster can smash through a wall to enter the opposing lab – this is so the 2 monsters can never meet in the doorway, as they need different paths. **Are we planning that this gamemode is only available in the castle? *Glowing limb on random players as the only limb that can be attached to respective monsters. Will only choose a limb to glow that the opposing team still needs. HUD icon to tell a player they have a glowing limb. Zombie Wheelchair Racing *Fire extinguishers provide momentum if friction is overcome (e.g. on ice). *Zombie spawns – crawling out of ground, appearing at the point of a lightning strike, climbing out of coffins with lids, dropping from above. *Human-to-zombie transition. **Whilst a transition effect is in the cards, having a zombie equivalent of each human character might be a bit of an ask – unless it is just a head change + animation change. *Zombie biting human forced anim – switch to 3ʳᵈ person view. **No problem in 3ʳᵈ person, but not sure how this is going to look in 1ˢᵗ person. Shootball *A player hit by a thrown ball catches it instead of being damaged by the object provided it is within 180 degrees of forwards. Otherwise it bounces off. *Throwing the ball into the net scores 1 point and restarts the game. *Punching the ballholder frees the ball in a random direction with random velocity between a min and max amount. *The ball blows up if held for a defined amount of time. *When a ball blows up, a portal opens and commentary is heard as from a real football match and the commentator says “And he shoots!” and the ball flies out of the portal… Same for restart. *The player with the ball is slowed slightly. *In variant B, the player can only rotate when in possession of the ball, they cannot traverse. Add It Up *Hats can be flagged to be fixed on and indestructible rather than behave in their normal manner. *It is necessary to assign numbers to players and track the order of kills for each player. Cratemod *Sonic bomb – an effect that reveals people hidden in crates. Ideally, fade the crates and show the person inside; more practically, just flash the crates and make a pinging noise. Has a fixed radius. Carried as a thrown object, means it does not prevent shooting guns. Cannot be dropped. *Always spawn out of LOS in Cratemod. Character Transition Gamemode *''Striptease'' – on each death we change the player’s model. Same with Ages of Man. Virus *Once a human is caught and becomes a zombie, they can then catch other humans and make them zombies. Score points for catching people and for how long you last. Predator *Sound effect on button press code so the Predator can scare the hell out of people. *Cloak/Decloak on button. *Auto-cloak when stationary and not firing. Hall of Medusa *Light beams projecting from the eyes of the Medusa mask. You should see the beams as you can torches in smoke. *Petrification of characters, including shattering. *Medusa mask's eyes opening with sound effect on events. *Medusa light beam petrification when looked at roughly directly. Barrel Roll *Spawning rolling barrels. Fire Pyre *Zombies emerging from coffins *Refuelling flamethrower from fuel pump *Spawning coffins rolling in through hatches Sweeny Todd Pie Bod *Pie machine/curry making machine. Cooked gibs in, food comes out. Basketmelon *Give player infinite supply of throwing object. Monkey Curling *Monkey launcher to fire monkeys through the air *SIXAXIS monkey curling – spin, velocity Zombie Jousting *Dual stick control of shield and lance. Determining hits, misses, blocks. London’s Burning *Pyromaniac AI character running around setting fires at specified locations. Rhythm Action *Shooting specified characters at a specific moment – success or failure. Dance routines. Visual indications of target and timing. Comedy limbs flying off during dance. Zombies shooting the player if they miss the target/beat. Restoring player health on successful shot. Super Zombie Turbo Puzzle Fighter *Coloured zombies, coloured grenades transporting those coloured zombies to spawn on the other side. Grey, temporarily invincible zombies on spawning or being hit by the wrong colour grenade. Colour changing stick to hit zombies and cycle through the colours. Zombie Herding *Zombie herding behaviour. Evolution *Being near the monolith increases evolution meter. Changing character model when bar fills. Pimp my Pussy *Earning money, cat customization screens. Unlocking new races on level of customisation. Cut Out Shoot Out *Scoring depending on speed of shot and accuracy to centre of target. Monkey Melons *Monkeys on set paths, points won for hitting melons and lost for hitting monkeys. Monkey behaviour on either outcome. Brickaruga *Light and dark A.I, Light and dark brick's effects on each A.I. type and on player. Player switching colour changes brick colour. The Great Crate Puzzler *Electrifying floor. Creating acid lake. |-|Game Rules= Element Properties Props must have the physical properties of mass, friction, and damage to inform their behaviour. These properties may change when the prop interacts with the 6 “elements” present within the game. They will not need to react to all elements, but, the more reactions they have, the better. The elements are: *'Fire' - Burns flammable props, reducing their mass and, after their fire damage quotient is exceeded, changes them to a burnt state and ultimately destroys them. Turned to steam by water, turns acid into gas. *'Water' - Reduces friction somewhat, increases the length of exposure to fire before ignition, extinguishes fire, can increase mass somewhat for certain props. Turned to steam by fire, conducts electricity across the prop, turned to acid by gas. *'Steam' - Becomes water on props, slows fire damage for certain props. *'Ice' - Freezes props, reducing their friction to almost zero, increases length of exposure to fire before ignition, reduces resistance to explosives/force, increases mass a little. Turned to water by fire. *'Electricity' - Explodes electrical props, massively speeds up mechanical props, can jump between conductive materials, makes hair stand on end, makes characters strobe-dance whilst flashing white with their skeleton revealed in black, causes hats and wigs to catch fire, can apply sudden force to characters sending them flying with sufficient voltage, slows fire damage for certain props, will eventually cause zombies to catch fire. *'Acid' – Dissolves certain props, reducing their mass and, after their acid damage quotient is exceeded, changes them to a dissolved state and ultimately destroys them. Turned to gas by fire. *'Gas' – Only affects living characters. Turned to acid by water. *'Explosion/physical force' – Damages props and applies force which can propel them if it overcomes mass and friction; if the damage exceeds the prop’s damage quotient, it changes to a smashed state, characters killed by explosives leave smoking boots. *'Magnetism' – Disorients Robots, causes metal objects to stick to robots, can cause rockets to return to sender… Pickups *'Small Objects' – Small props can be picked up and used as a melee weapon or thrown. Examples are detached zombie limbs and chemical flasks. When near an appropriate object, a symbol of it will appear in the HUD. You will be prompted to press a button to pick it up. **'Option 1' – Throwing Items are carried in the left hand, two handed guns are held 1-handed for the duration. Items can be thrown, a quick press throws maximum distance, holding the button builds up a power bar to judge the throw. Items can also be dropped on a separate button. If a melee item such as a baseball bat or limb is chosen to be picked up by the player, it replaces the gun in the right hand. It will be held until a gun is selected, at which point it is dropped or another melee item is picked up where again it is dropped. Finally, it may be thrown or it may break. If a melee weapon and a throwable object are both held, the throw button throws the object first, retaining the melee weapon. If a new gun is picked up by running over it while holding a melee weapon, the gun goes into the inventory. It is not selected and so the melee weapon is not dropped. **'Option 2' – Throwing items and melee items replace the weapon. It is impossible to shoot whilst carrying one. Selecting a gun drops the item. It is only possible to hold 1 item at a time. Physics Objects All props are physics objects. This is fine when they are spread out, but, if they are gathered together, the CPU hit becomes too great. In this situation, props will have to be removed in some way, for example dissolving. All prop types will have a priority to indicate the order in which they will be removed. Props with the same priority will be removed according to first visibility, then length of time they have been inactive. Critical Props A critical prop would be the Bag in Capture the Bag. If it is thrown somewhere inaccessible, we need to be able to handle this behaviour. Methods would be to respawn the bag if it is inactive for a certain period of time, or to use comedy physics to scoot it back into play. Melee There are three types of melee attack – with a melee weapon such as a chainsaw, with a gun or an unarmed attack such as a punch. Melee weapons do the most damage, followed by gun melee and, finally, punches. The exception is the Timesplitter unarmed melee attack, which can be very powerful. When a melee attack is initiated, we see whether there is a target both within a narrow cone projected from the front of the player and within range. If both conditions are met, the melee attack will be successful and we can play appropriate animations to show the attack connecting with the enemy’s head, coupled with a hit react. It is important to give the feedback of a successful hit through animation and sound. An attack from the rear is more damaging than an attack from the front. Doors In all game levels, all doors slide either sideways or upwards regardless of time period. No swing doors, they are a pain in the arse. (Hotel is an exception as it is not playable) Cloak Splitters or humans with an appropriate powerup can cloak. This may be indefinite or have a time component. TimeSplitters can only attack when decloaked. Cloaked characters are not completely invisible, but they are hard to see except from certain circumstances. Particle clouds reveal the passage of cloaked characters, as do pools of liquid. Sonar vision mode also reveals them. Weapon Pickups Humans, zombies and certain robots can pick up new weapons by running over them. If the weapon is not currently possessed, it will be picked up. There are various player-selected options for what happens next. Players can choose to always switch to the new weapon picked up, to never switch, or to switch if the weapon is better than the one currently wielded. The player can, in his profile, rank all the weapons in order so that they choose themselves which weapons are better than others, else we use the default rankings. If a weapon is already possessed, then running over it adds ammo for the weapon. A weapon that is in the player's inventory and then run over never causes the weapon to switch. When a gun runs out of ammo, it is dropped. |-|Generic Code= *Cloaking *Picking up *Throwing *Melee *Elements *Leaping *Fire Extinguisher Propulsion (FEP) *Exaggerated physics *Jump pads *Element dispensers *Knockback of characters by explosions, etc. |-|Good Gun List= *Tommy gun (x2) *Homing rocket launcher *Rocket launcher *Electro tool *Laser gun – lame – shield good *Silenced Pistol (x2) *LX-18 (x2) *Garret Revolver (x2) *Crossbow *Vintage Rifle *Flamethrower (if done properly) *Shotgun (x2) *Tactical 12-Gauge / Assault shotgun *Soviet S47 (x2) *Sci-Fi Handgun *Plasma Autorifle (alternate fire of plasma grenades) *SBP90 Machinegun (x2) *Minigun *Grenade Launcher *Proximity Mine *Remote Mine *TNT *Fire Extinguisher (Blind enemies?) *Brick *HL2 Overwatch pulse rifle plus bouncing disintegrator sphere alternate fire *HL2 Crossbow *HL2 Magnum *M-16 *Phasers *Futuristic pistol *Assault rifle with underslung grenade launcher e.g. BF2 *BF2142 Support weapon (becomes more accurate as you fire it, very inaccurate when moving) *Harpoon gun *Baseball bat *Chainsaw *Dart Gun (x2) *Flare gun (x2) *HL1 small creatures that swarm and attack enemy *HL1 Needle gun – semi-seeking, autoregenerates ammo *Cat *Boomerang *Counter-Strike Elephant Gun (Huge sniper rifle audible throughout the level – BOOM!) Ancient *Automatic crossbow *Ancient harpoon gun *Phosphorous bomb *Torch style flamer thrower – (has bellows) *Boomerang Past *Cyberpunk chainsaw *Automatic Flintlock pirate pistol *Pirate handheld cannon – equivalent to rocket launcher (unguided) Contemporary *Pistol *Assault shotgun *Sniper rifle *Chainsaw gun *Machine gun *Minigun *Flame thrower *Brick *Universal Object Thrower (Universal TOSSER) Retro Future *Star Trek phaser *Phaser blaster *Ice gun *Future *Homing Rocket Launcher *Sci-Fi sniper *Sticky plasma grenade |-|HUD Requirements= *Robot HUD – think The Terminator, highlighting threats in the 3 vision modes, etc. *It’s Alive – HUD to show level of completion of the monster. To show if you have the glowing limb. *Wife Swap – to show what wife you have. *Weapon select. *Ammo. *Any object being carried. *Prompt to pick up an object plus icon to show what it is. *Health *Armour *Timesplitter HUD – organic style *Human HUD – could be time-period-specific… *Any elements affecting the player, e.g. acid, gas, etc. *I am the Predator *I am cloaked (cloaking/decloaking) *I am on the “colour” team *I have the soap! (icon for bag in Capture the Bag games) *Number sequence for Add it Up *Score *Lives *Weapon held *Missile lock detected (for robots) *Shield activated (for robots) *Power-up active, e.g. sprint, shrink, etc. *I am the Medusa! (probably its own vision mode) *Electricity disrupting robot HUD *Countdowns, e.g. till football explodes *Pies made / curries served *COMPASS!!! |-|Schedule= 50 man-months *1 artist fulltime - 8 mm *3 programmers - 3x8=24 mm *1 project lead - 10 mm *1 game designer - 8 mm *½ character artist / concept character art - 4 mm PR Assets – Concept Art Problems – Guns Main coding focus *Programmer 1 – Animation *Programmer 2 – A.I./Scripting *Programmer 3 - Graphics, Physics, Destructibility General Setup Project and Demo *Directory and TS project *Extensive profiling code. *Gun code – shotgun *Places of interest (hints control setup – Gears of War). Player Code - Player generic pick-up and throw mechanics. Will have problems with holding objects – need 3 or so grip sizes for 1ˢᵗ-person animations. All pick-up-able and throwable objects would have to fit with these predetermined grip sizes. Character Code - Limb removal / re-attaching. Visual editing of joint attaching. Mask joint connections. Animated characters <-> ragdoll <-> animated characters. Physics / Rigid Body - Simple soft-body physics (2 joints) for brains. Slippery physics. Quivering gibs. Optimized physics meshes. One optimized mesh for the level will work best. Destructible props. Picking up and throwing physics objects – can put all physics objects into a single room! This will be handled by destroying/ fading away excessive objects based on an importance priority. Vehicle physics – not really vehicles, but cats and wheelchairs. AI and Scripting - General zombie AI behaviour and classes. Scripting game modes – logic for game modes driven by data scripts (VM). Graphical Effects - The particle editor should help for some of these (BF team are coding this). Bubbling liquids. Dripping rain. Pools of water and ice. Ice effect. It is important that the effect apply to any prop/shape of prop. Shattering of any frozen object. Acidic meltdown of any object. Electricity effect. HUD code. Performance stats/limits – textures, polys, etc. |-|Tech Plan= *Get an executable building that uses the minimal framework resources. This will involve creating an alternative main.cpp where game-specific initialization is moved into a game-specific path within the code base. The executable will build, initialize the engine and minimal framework, and exit. *Get an asset build system in place. This will probably require a TS4 “Igor” machine. *Loading a level. *A character in the level, rendering with no animation. *Player controls. *Simple props with physics. *Shooting. *Basic front end with the ability to create and join multiplayer LAN games. *Multiplayer play. Initially without split screen. *Simple game rules. *Object pick-ups. *Object throwing. *Elements. *Use VM for game rules. |-|Elemental Tech= Technical specifications for elemental interactions - This document is a programming specification for the physics / elemental interaction required for TS4. The main aim is to fully describe the scope of interaction required on a per-element basis, so that, when coding begins, the programmer knows right from the start the range of behaviours and interaction with the world. Limitations - Most of the behaviour described will be specific to interaction with props and not the static background, unless specified otherwise. This is a realistic performance limitation. Fill rate is expected to be a real issue – lots of props contributing to lots of particles – where possible, LODs for the effects / shaders will have to be employed. Fire - Each prop will have flags to define: *Rate of flammability *Ability to propagate fire – this is a difficult gameplay issue to get the right balance. The propagation of fire in TS2 was problematic. Character propagation of fire from limb to limb? Maybe can only propagate fire in the initial stages of combustion. Will need global flags and per object type flags for propagation control. Appearance – A burnt shader that blends during the burn process. Once burnt, some objects: *Will collapse into physics objects that fall and then fade. *Collapse into generic burnt gibs that fade away. *Remain intact, maintaining volume, just look charred. Steam / Gas Really just a transient effect. Good looking steam, requires a high density of particles, that have obvious fill rate issues. We are hoping to experiment with some full-screen fogging to minimize performance issues whilst the player is in a steam volume. Gas volumes will have to have LODs build into them. Contact with steam causes health damage. The difference between gas and steam will be colour. Ice / Water and Puddles Puddle technology. Water puddles that can be frozen. Puddles are essentially decals. The hope is that we do not need to label the background to indicate floors that can have puddles. Worst-case scenario is that we use the low-poly physics mesh to label puddle floors. Puddles will have a linked list structure to allow linking of puddles to create frozen pathways. Frozen puddles will thaw back to water and water puddles will ‘evaporate’ and fade away. Some puddles will be permanent (a flag), e.g. from a background roof leak. As with most things in the game world, there will be a limit of puddles that can be generated at any one time, which will handled by deleting oldest puddles not in the players view, etc. Creating icicles from faces which have normals pointing downwards would be a nice effect. Puddles should also have environment maps – the issue here is what environment map to attach to the puddle. At the moment, the plan is for the editor to create a low-resolution environment map per room. Electricity The code and effects for electricity in TS:FP would be a good starting point. X-ray effect would be good – although it would require a bone skeleton model for each different skeleton. |-|Controls= controlsts4.png |-|Pre-Production Plans= TS4 Pre-Production – now to year ending 2007 An outline of the tech/plans that will be in place by the end of the pre-production stage. Background Art For each of the 20 multiplayer maps: *Concept Art + Reference material. *Blocked out level. Built in GTK Radiant or Maya. *Poly / Prop budget placed in level. Fast Lighting Preview + Lighting model finalized. Multiplayer block out levels to be multiplayer playtested. (player v. player only) Character Editor integrated with the World Editor. Snatch ‘n’ Stitch system implemented. Full character list finalized – balanced number of character types, e.g. zombies, robots, etc. (10 or so free slots for character requests during game development)) Universal prop rules – fully implemented even if graphical feedback is weak or non-existent. Character effects required for gamemodes Colours |-|Publisher Strategy= Stage 1 - Teaser July/August Magazines UK lead times 4/5 weeks – exclusive with OPM American lead times 8 weeks Announcing TimeSplitters 4 will in itself guarantee magazine space. The aim is to maximize this initial stage of publicity by piggybacking the publicity of a high-profile advertising campaign. It is important not to release any information about the actual game. spoofposter1.jpg spoofposter2.jpg Stage 2 - Second Teaser The following month from Stage 1 Having announced the game, we really want to fuel speculation about the game content/format. Ideally, an image that really hints at diverse gameplay, or points towards controversial content. Something like Zombie Wheelchair racing. Just a picture and, again, no explanation. Stage 3 - FMV Trailer Monkey of Troy FMV (hauling the monkey into the arena) + a series of concept pictures and articles about the game content. oksobasicly.jpg By this stage we would hope to have acquired a publisher! References *bespoke_code.doc (30/04/2007) *game_rules.doc (01/05/2007) *generic_code.doc (15/05/2007) *good_gun_list.doc (23/05/2007) *hud_requirements.doc (13/06/2007) *schedule.doc (03/05/2007) *tech_plan.doc (03/05/2007) *technical_specifications_for_elemental_interactions.doc (18/05/2007) *ts4_controls.doc (12/06/2007) *ts4_pre_production_plans.doc (16/04/2007) *ts4_publisher_strategy.doc (02/04/2007) Category:TimeSplitters 4